Integrating Print and Digital Resources in Library Collections

Citation

James, S. (2007), "Integrating Print and Digital Resources in Library Collections", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 3, pp. 244-245. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710736028

The hybrid library is a fact of our lives, and will remain so for as long as books are published in parallel with our electronic resources. The balance between them varies from library to library, and within libraries varies from subject to subject, or from user to user, and even in relation to individual users can be different at different times. We all know the problems that this situation brings us, we are all tackling them, whether individually in relation to our own services, or collaboratively, and we all can report varying degrees of success and frustration.

That is reflected in these papers. The value of these Haworth Press collections on all manner of topics is to disseminate more widely the experiences reported at various conferences around the world. Some of that experience is, of course, common to many, and some more transient than others. But we can at least usually pick some useful nuggets, or at best find sets of papers with a high degree of relevance and of more lasting value.

This collection falls between the two extremes. In the first of two “Issues and opinions” papers, David Ball gives a good overview of the wider implications of electronic resource licences, although this is a field in which change is rapid and sometimes fundamental. Similarly, Bethany R. Levrault surveys the balance (or imbalance) between printed and electronic resources in reference work, again in an area where change is rapid. Five papers under “Research and analysis” give us parts of an evidence base for how we are actually using electronic against print resources, in different subjects and in different sizes of library.

Six papers under “Histories and projects” again give us experience from specific libraries: how do we take the decisions to cut particular serial titles or decide between print and electronic versions? Can we cut an under‐used title when we find we are signed up to a multi‐year electronic subscription? Does the dramatic increase in serial titles in my own library through e‐subscriptions actually mask a number of titles acquired through packages which are actually useless to my users? And how do we integrate print and virtual materials?

We do not expect ready answers to any of these issues, but it is always useful to know how others are addressing them in the same, or similar, or even in markedly different, situations. That remains the function of these collections of papers, and this collection again offers us various practical suggestions and contributes to the evidence base of what we are doing, how we are doing it, and, most importantly, why we are doing it.